Wow! <br><br>That's some well thought (and written) advice. I'll look in to those things, with him, and explore what might best suit him.<br><br>Daymon (my son) was passing by on his way to bed and I showed him the options that you suggested. We're both excited. :) <br>
<br>Thank you so much for the time, effort, consideration and compassion involved!!<br>G<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Christopher DeMarco <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:demarco@maya.com">demarco@maya.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 08:39:03PM -0400, George Larson wrote:<br>
<br>
> Advice??<br>
<br>
I kinda feel like the kid's interests and aptitudes are the most<br>
important factor.<br>
<br>
If he's interested in and/or good at math, then programming<br>
Mathematica, gnuplot or matlab might be really fascinating. If you're<br>
like me, you can grok the language but since you know nuts about the<br>
*domain*, it's frustrating and useless - but for a kid who digs this<br>
stuff, it's like candy.<br>
<br>
A kid who's artistically inclined might get satisfaction from making<br>
beautiful things in Flash or Processing. Or write Python scripts in<br>
the Gimp. Adobe has a bunch of magical products these days (I think<br>
Air is one?).<br>
<br>
Organized types could explore Dot (for import into Graphviz or<br>
Omnigraffle) and visualize things like family trees. Or write<br>
Word/OpenOffice macros to personalize holiday letters/cards.<br>
Visualize traffic patterns or gas prices or baseball card prices or<br>
anything else for which datasets exist, using Processing or the<br>
AMAZING Google Charts. Overlay GPS tracks on Google Maps.<br>
<br>
Some kids might get a kick out of writing games -- the Elder Scrolls,<br>
Neverwinter Nights and many others have fairly interesting programming<br>
environments built in. Microsoft's XNA Creators Club is a REAL game<br>
development environment for the Xbox360. I believe that sites like<br>
Kongregate host toolkits for Flash game creation.<br>
<br>
Build Greasemonkey extensions for Firefox to do weird and wonderful<br>
stuff with the web. Build CSS skins for the family website -- you do<br>
have a family website, right!? Experiment with porting the whole<br>
thing to a CMS, and then write plugins. All major OSes are<br>
"skinnable", perhaps with add-on software -- build some skins.<br>
<br>
Get issues of Make magazine that deal with "circuit bending" or other<br>
home electronic projects: EE is close enough to programing for your<br>
purposes. Wire up some rudimentary circuits. If they do something<br>
*useful*, all the better!<br>
<br>
Some kids groove on systems. Dig around in the Internet protocols:<br>
teach Python to send email, or even text messages. Setup a toy<br>
webserver. Flash the firmware on your Linksys with Linux, and<br>
re-configure your home network. Program your TiVo.<br>
<br>
Play with PGP, or pen-test your home network. Setup a web filter<br>
blocking his favorite sites and wager him a new computer that he can't<br>
break out.<br>
<br>
Lego Mindstorms rock. iRobot (think Roomba) sells a development<br>
platform. Pleo is programmable. So is Second Life.<br>
<br>
Get him interested -- kids want to emulate their parents, but when he<br>
sees how much hard work it is, he will lose interest in "doing it<br>
too." But if you get him hooked on something that's as intrinsically<br>
interesting to him as PHP is to you, he'll stick with it. Remember<br>
that the tools aren't the point: find his goals, his triggers and his<br>
pain points and get him to address them with technology.<br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
Christopher DeMarco <<a href="mailto:demarco@maya.com">demarco@maya.com</a>><br>
IT Director<br>
MAYA Group<br>
+1-412-708-9660<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br>